Dutch unemployment rate falls

THE HAGUE, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Dutch unemployment fell to 673,000 people in May this year, the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) stated on Thursday.

Unemployment in May dropped by 14,000 and amounted to 8.6 percent of the workforce. The reason for the fall was, according to the CBS, that more people got paid work.

It is the first time this year that the unemployment rate goes down because people got more paid work. In March, the unemployment rate also dropped, but at that time the reason was that people withdrew from the labor market because they could not find a job. In April, Dutch unemployment rose by 3,000 people.

The new development follows a growing number of jobs available and staffing hours in the beginning of this year. Both the decline in unemployment and the increase in the working force was the largest among the 25- to 45-year-olds.

Since the CBS started measuring unemployment in the 1980s, the amount of 694,000 jobless people of July 2013 is a record. However, the rate of July 2013 (8.7 percent) is not a record. In 1983-1984 the percentage was over 10 percent, but the labor force was much smaller at that time.